Here’s a final reminder to sign up for the Westwords Crossword Tournament next weekend. Being a new dad means I can’t make it there in person and probably won’t be able to compete virtually, but I’ll be sure to order the puzzles for solving at home once the tourney is finished.

You’ll notice some diagonally circled squares in today’s puzzle, as well as some clues whose answers don’t appear to fit their allotted spaces. The circled words are celebrities who are literally rising up, and their names are contained in longer phrases that start in one row and finish in another.

  • 25A: [Olive-based spread (“Cesar Chavez” actor Michael)] is TAPENADE. It starts with TA, rises up with PENA, and ends with DE in the 1A entry CHARADE.
  • 33A: [Express gratitude (“Big” actor Tom)] is GIVE THANKS. It starts with GIVET, then rises up with HANKS.
  • 63A: [Carts full of dirt, maybe (“Luther” actor Idris)] is WHEELBARROWS. It starts with WHE, rises up with ELBA, then ends with RROWS in the 47A entry ARROWS.
  • 65A: [Bad place for an idiomatic bull (“Claws” actress Niecy)] is CHINA SHOP. It starts with CHI, rises up with NASH, then ends with OP in the 49A entry BARHOP.
  • 99A: [Old fair game in which people collect starchy food items as quickly as possible (“Anywhere” singer Rita)] is POTATO RACE. It starts with POTAT, rises up with ORA, then ends with CE in the 90A entry TRACE.
  • 102A: [Facial features with prominent bridges (“Save Me” singer Aimee)] is ROMAN NOSES. It starts with RO, rises up with MANN, then ends with OSES in the 84A entry PROGNOSES.

There’s a spelled-out meta answer, too, at 113A: [Rising star, and what’s spelled out by the first letters of this puzzle’s rising stars]. Take the first letters of the circled celebrities in order (PENA, HANKS, ELBA, NASH, ORA, MANN), and you get PHENOM.

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Diagonal answers always cause me some consternation since they place heavier demands on the grid than standard Across or Down answers do. Where the letters of Across and Down answers have to account for two answers each, the letters of diagonal words are “triple-checked,” meaning they account for three answers each. In an odd way, diagonal answers can make the task tougher for me to build the puzzle while potentially making it easier for you to solve it, because now you have an extra avenue for figuring out those particular letters. And in this puzzle, the PHENOM letters in the rising stars’ names are quadruple-checked — in their respective Across and Down entries, in the circled celebrities’ names, and in spelling out PHENOM itself.

Some other answers and clues:

  • 45A: [Standardised test subject] is MATHS. Note the British spelling to indicate the British term.
  • 92A: [ESPN basketball analyst Legler] is TIM Legler. You may have seen him on ESPN lately if you’ve been watching the NBA Finals.
  • 119A: [Candidate for being considered the GOAT] is LEGEND. This isn’t about any one particular athlete or celebrity, but I thought it was funny that this answer appears right underneath PHENOM.
  • 2D: [Those studying string theory?] is HARPISTS. It’s not about particle physics, but music theory.
  • 5D is ASK and 18D is SAY, both clued as: [“I’ve gotta ___ ...”]. Sometimes a cluing echo just presents itself to you.
  • Speaking of cluing echoes, 98D is GREEN and 100D is OCHER, both clued as [Earth tone]. You usually won’t see GREEN clued that way where it’s a fairly common angle for OCHER, though GREEN also works on a more literal level in that you’ll probably find that color on a picture of the planet Earth.
  • 115D: [Point value of an A, E, I, L, N, O, R, S, T, or U tile in Scrabble] is ONE. I could be wrong about this but I think the numbers ONE, NINE, TEN and NINETEEN are the only numbers in English whose letters are made up entirely of 1-point Scrabble tiles.

What did you think?

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